(no subject)

[timelets]

...time seems to constitute one of the major parameters of the context on which the meaning of social acts and situ­ations depends.

Ac­cording to Durkheim, the real characteristic of religious phenomena is that they always suppose a bipartite division of the whole universe, known and knowable, into two classes which embrace all that exists, but which radically exclude each other. For Durkheim, no way of classifying the universe is more funda­mental to human cognition than the one between these two cate­gories - the sacred and the profane: In all the history of human thought there exists no other example of two categories of things so profoundly differentiated or so radically opposed to one another.
...
To achieve such an absolute distinction in the human mind, a total separation of these two domains in actuality is essential.

--- Evitar Zerubavel. Hidden Rhythms, 1985.

What would be long-term advantages of such separation? Is this the fundamental feature of our civilization that allows for rule making and rule following?